The Insanity
by Broadwaylover5300
Summary: Corny realizes just how insane the military really is.


**First of all, I'd like to dedicate this story to tadsgirl for, through the latest chapter of her newest story, inspired me to write this one-shot!**

**This story is inspired by Arlo Guthrie's classic song Alice's Restaurant. I don't own the song.**

It had just been a good deed.

In the Thanksgiving of 1963, Corny and one of his friends, Billy, had gone to a small town in northern Maryland to visit a poor friend of both of them, a friend who lived in an old abandoned church with her son. Her husband had died in a factory accident a few years ago, and the minister, back when the church was still being used, offered to let them live in the church. The church had now been abandoned since then, and the church had been converted into a makeshift home.

There was only one problem with this home. There was a huge pile of trash in it. Corny and Billy were told that the garbage would have been taken to the dump, but since the only person in the church strong enough to take care of it had passed on, the trash had just gathered. So, Corny had told Billy that, since Thanksgiving was tomorrow, they could do a good deed by dumping the trash in the town dump. Billy agreed, and, right then and there, they decided to do so.

The next day, Corny and Billy loaded the trash into Billy's pickup truck and drove to the town dump, only to find the chain-link fence that surrounded the dump locked with a chain and padlock, with a sign hanging on the fence that said, "Closed on Thanksgiving."

Corny and Billy looked at each other, and Corny said, "I never heard of a dump that was closed on Thanksgiving."

Billy shook his head in response and replied, "Well, we're gonna have to find someplace else to dump it."

Corny nodded and they started looking for a place to dump the garbage, eventually finding one in a ditch by a small side-road. When Corny and Billy looked down, they saw that there was another pile of trash at the bottom. Corny told Billy that he thought that one large pile of trash was better than two small ones, so they dumped the trash right on top of the other pile. Feeling good about themselves, they returned to the church.

They were in the middle of eating the small Thanksgiving dinner that had been prepared when the phone rang. Corny walked up to the podium on which the phone sat and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Is this Corny Collins?" a gruff voice came from the receiver.

"Yes," Corny replied.

"We need you and William Connor to come down to police headquarters downtown immediately," the voice said.

Corny and Billy complied by going down to the station. A fat, short police officer came out of a room behind the desk and beckoned them to follow him. Corny and Billy did so.

"Boys, I am officer Cooper," the officer said. "We have reports that you two were seen dumping garbage off the side of Sagebrush Avenue. Is this true?"

Corny and Billy looked at each other. Corny looked at Cooper and said, "Yes, sir, I cannot tell a lie; that was us."

Cooper whipped a pair of handcuffs off of his belt, slapped them on Corny and Billy, and said, "Well, littering's illegal in this state, and you two are under arrest."

Corny and Billy reluctantly complied as Cooper took their wallets, belts, and any other personal possessions and shoved them into the cell.

The next day was the trial. As Corny and Billy walked into the room, they saw Cooper behind a table with about a hundred glossy black-and-white photographs, all marked up with a paragraph on the back of each one describing how each one was to be used as evidence. Corny felt it was a bit much, but he then rationalized that since this town was a one-stoplight town, that this was probably the biggest crime that had taken place there in years, and it was the time for this community's police force to shine. The judge did find Corny and Billy guilty, and they were both fined twenty-five dollars.

* * *

It was now 1965. The United States was in the thick of Vietnam, and Link had somehow convinced Corny to go to Whitehall Street in New York to get his physical and mental examination so he could join the military. Corny reluctantly agreed and went with Link to New York City.

Corny was ushered through the several rooms that all examinees went through, being poked, prodded, injected, inspected, detected, neglected, and selected. Once Corny had completed doing so, a man came up to him with a clipboard and said, "Okay, son, go to the shrink."

Corny entered the room the man had indicated to find a man in a white coat and tie sitting behind a desk. This was the chance that Corny had been waiting for, his chance to prove how cruel and inhuman the military was by pretending to be inhuman himself.

Corny began. "Shrink, I want to kill. I wanna kill, kill, kill. I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I wanna KILL, KILL, KILL!" Corny started jumping up and down, yelling, "KILL! KILL! KILL!" As he did so, the shrink started jumping up and down with him, yelling the same thing.

Suddenly, a man came in, pinned a medal to Corny's chest, and yelled, "You're our boy!"

Corny wasn't too happy about being their boy.

Corny went on with the physical inspection, until he came to a room with a long bench all around it, areas separated by letters of the alphabet. In the middle of the room sat a man at a desk.

Corny walked up to the desk and asked, "What do you want?"

"We only got one question, kid," the man said. "Have you ever been arrested?"

Corny proceeded to tell the man the story of the Thanksgiving garbage incident, only to be cut off by the man pointing to a bench and yelling, "Go sit with group W, kid!"

Corny nodded and did so.

The man who sat next to Corny looked at Corny and asked, "What did you get sent up for?"

"I didn't get sent up," Corny replied. "I got arrested for littering."

The man made a face at Corny until Corny added, "and for disturbing the peace."

The man smiled and clapped Corny on the back, and they just sat there, laughing and joking, until the man at the desk got up from his desk with a stack of forms, handing out one to each member of group W.

The man then launched into a long speech. "Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say…" and he kept talking for about another forty-five minutes, and nobody in group W, except Corny, really understood what the guy was saying, but they all had fun playing with the pencils and filling out the forms.

Corny was having fun filling out the form until he got to the back of the form. He turned it over, and in the center of the back page, in capital letters, it read, "HAVE YOU BEEN REHABILITATED?"

Corny got up, walked up to the man, who had returned to his desk, and said, "Sergeant, you've got a lot of nerve asking me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I'm sitting here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug."

The sergeant sneered at Corny and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."

The prints went to Washington, and Corny didn't go to Vietnam.

Corny was grateful for that.


End file.
